Cross-Cultural New Year’s Bash

As first-year medical students at NYU, Andrew Goodwillie, now 32, and Sonia Tolani, 35, began their relationship as just friends. Things took a turn for the romantic, however, when they shared a microscope in a lab class; Sonia had to help Andrew, who is color-blind, decipher the cell structures. The couple (both doctors now) dated for more than six years until May 2010, when Andrew proposed. From there, they planned a New Year’s Eve celebration that enabled out-of-town friends and relatives—his from Scotland, hers from India and Indiana—to turn the trip to New York into a winter vacation. “We wanted it to be more of a party,” says Sonia. “Our big thing was combining the Indian culture from my side with the Scottish culture from his.” The bride wore a vintage sari, and the groom wore a kilt, and after the ceremony, Sonia’s friends surprised her with a choreographed Bollywood dance. Says Sonia: “It was a perfectly blended smashup.”